26 Replies - 2813 Views - Last Post: 19 April 2011 - 07:49 PM

The best way to keep on top of passwords?

Posted 07 April 2011 - 12:22 PM

As I'm sure almost everybody here does, I have a lot of passwords for a lot of different things.
Recently, I've been creating much more secure passwords, but because of that I've also been forgetting them a lot sooner.

So, I've been looking into password managers, password reference cards and other such things and I was wondering what most people use to keep on top of their passwords?

Also, if you do use a password manager, then which and why?

My apologies if this is in the wrong forum, the off-topic sections are all a little hard to choose between.

Re: The best way to keep on top of passwords?

Re: The best way to keep on top of passwords?

Posted 07 April 2011 - 02:52 PM

People that write their passwords down make my job substantially easier... It's not clever to try and hide it underneath the keyboard or anything such as that. It's also a bad idea to use any personal information in it or something like "password".

If you have troubles remembering your password just invent an algorithm to create your own and base everything from it. This could be something simple like rotating the letters 3 up or a simple substitution. It could also be something such as your name plus a friends or family member on the ascii table.

Don't be apathetic about passwords though, it makes jobs for me so much easier that it's almost not fair to the company that hires me. It takes me on average 5 minutes to find some dolt who used password or their birthday.

Re: The best way to keep on top of passwords?

Posted 08 April 2011 - 02:17 AM

I kind of have the same system, I change passwords every few months. I only use the new password when signing up. I don't change old passwords.
So I just have to know the general time in which an account was created and use the password i was using at that moment.

I only use completely unique passwords on important stuff like paypal and email etc.
those are easy to remember.

Re: The best way to keep on top of passwords?

Posted 08 April 2011 - 05:52 AM

My password is a combination of the website the password is for, with a default password with a count of certain letter in the domain name. Easy to remember, and if one account is compromised, the others are still safe.

Re: The best way to keep on top of passwords?

I've actually used that one - it was one of my favorites - but it's no longer in use. The new passwords are far longer and more complicated.

And I don't write them down and "hide" them under my keyboard. They get written on the backs of old receipts and shoved into my wallet with all the other old receipts, the backs of which are all scribbled with something semi-decipherable (phone numbers, cryptic notes to myself, other passwords, dates and times, etc, etc). I can tell whether or not a password is current by looking at the receipt date.

For accounts that don't require forced password changes (ie, DIC, my personal webmail, utility companies, etc), I have a series of five passwords that I've used for years. It's always one of the five, or a variation thereof. These are not written down - I've used them for eons... my fingers are trained for these specific passwords.

Re: The best way to keep on top of passwords?

Posted 08 April 2011 - 12:54 PM

I also have different passwords for the level of security I want. If it's a service that's not very important (small websites), I would use a small password that I tend to use everywhere. However if it's something larger (like my paypal or wells fargo), I will use a more advanced, longer, and unique password.